MISSILES IN MAINE: U.S. President Bush and Russian President Putin will discuss Iran, civil nuclear cooperation and missile defense, among other topics, when Putin visits the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, in early July, according to White House representatives. "Cooperation between the United States and Russia is important in solving regional conflicts, stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction and combating terrorism and extremism," they stressed May 30. Russia continues to vociferously oppose a U.S.
The U.S. Coast Guard expects a refund of significantly less than the $100 million it spent toward eight failed 123-foot patrol boats provided through the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman running the Deepwater program, according to the service's commandant.
Following the House this month, the Senate in June likely will pass legislation that pushes the U.S. Navy toward dual production of Virginia-class submarines starting in fiscal 2010, two years ahead of current controversial plans for long-term shipbuilding. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) approved its fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill May 25, adding $470 million above the Bush administration's request for advance procurement funding for Virginias.
CHINA INVESTMENT: China's new government-owned foreign exchange investment corporation, currently being formed, plans to invest $3 billion in the Blackstone Group, a New York-based private equity firm increasingly active in the communications satellite sector. Blackstone formerly owned New Skies Satellites, now part of SES, and is now reportedly seeking to buy Intelsat from its private equity owners. It also has performed transactions with General Electric and Northrop Grumman.
IRANIAN GOTCHA: U.S. reconnaissance spacecraft have spotted a training center in Iran that duplicates the layout of the governor's compound in Karbala, Iraq, that was attacked in January by a special unit that killed American and Iraqi solders. The U.S. believes the discovery indicates that Iran was heavily involved in the strike, which used a fake motorcade to gain entrance to the compound. The duplicate layout in Iran allowed the attackers to practice the exact procedures they would use at the real compound, the Defense Department believes.
The Pentagon's planned Africa Command faces "myriad challenges" ranging from where to locate its headquarters to how governments in Africa and elsewhere will react to a new American presence on the continent, a congressional study says.
After watching the lopsided success of U.S. forces in the early operations of recent conflicts, China has started to modernize its own military in a like manner, according to the recent annual Pentagon report on the country's military. What China wants to do, according to the report, is develop the kind of network-linked and information-driven - or "informatized" - forces that are now the hallmark of the United States and its allies.
The U.S. Navy said last week that it will field the first Shipboard Protection System (SPS) aboard a naval surface combatant this month, spearheading a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) ship-defense response to the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000. SPS Block 1 will be installed on an unidentified Navy ship in the last three months of 2007. Installation on three other vessels is planned for next year.
HAMPTON, VA. - The X-51A scramjet engine demonstrator has passed critical design review (CDR) and the program has begun procuring flight hardware for a series of Mach 6-7 flight-tests to begin in the summer of 2009. Following a successful series of wind-tunnel tests of a full-scale scramjet here at NASA's Langley Research Center, program officials expect to have a second scramjet, designated the "flight clearance engine," completed by September.
NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) is concentrating some of its technology development funding on near-term items needed to enable the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle's 5-meter diameter ablative heat shield to withstand re-entry at lunar-return velocities. Boeing is developing a heat shield for the Orion crew capsule made of Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) material manufactured by Fiber Materials Inc. of Biddeford, Maine. Engineers at Ames Research Center are testing its performance in high-temperature arc jets.
COMBAT LEASES: The Defense Department is proposing to amend the defense acquisition regulations to address leasing of combat vehicles, ships or aircraft. The proposed rule permits the lease only if the contract will be long-term or will provide for a "substantial" termination liability, according to a May 22 notice in the Federal Register. Public comments are due by July 23.
A U.S. Army general has chided military leaders to make training against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) more of a priority in pre-deployment training, according to a Pentagon publication. "IEDs are the number one killer on the battlefield," said Brig. Gen. Robert Cone, director of the Army's Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) center at Fort Irwin, Calif.
China already has developed and deployed state-of-the-art air and sea forces that could give U.S. counterparts quite a battle, the Pentagon's recent annual report on the country's military says, and could deploy an aircraft carrier in the next decade or shortly thereafter. China is sinking big money into its military. "The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimates China's total military-related spending for 2007 could be as much as $85 billion to $125 billion," according to the report (See charts p. 6-7).
Despite the U.S. Air Force's current preoccupation with developing a fixed airspace defense command and control (C2) system to defend North America, the real emerging world market is in mobile systems, service and industry sources say. At the same time, the Air Force's plan to evolve its troubled Battle Control System Fixed (BCS-F) program into a mobile system will give BCS-F prime Thales Raytheon Systems (TRS) a leg up in the mobile market as well.
Virtually unanimous approval of 2006 audit results by Safran shareholders, combined with strong backing from Supervisory Board President Francis Mer, have buoyed the position of Safran Chairman Jean-Paul Bechat, perhaps signaling he may stay on beyond his planned September retirement date. The shareholders okayed the findings of independent auditors who concluded in April that problems at Safran's Sagem Defense & Security division were imputable to management snafus by Sagem officials who have since been dismissed, and not to Bechat.
Congressional auditors have released a damning report concerning the U.S. Navy and Special Operations Command's (SOCOM) abbreviated Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) program, telling lawmakers that the Navy failed to effectively contract for and oversee the program and did not hold prime contractor Northrop Grumman accountable.
ARMY Fabritech Inc., East Alton, Ill., was awarded on May 18, 2007, an $11,370,375 firm-fixed-price contract for spare parts for the CH-47 helicopter. The work will be performed in East Alton and is expected to be completed by May 3, 2010. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were two bids solicited on March 9, 2007, and one bid was received. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-07-C-0141).
AIRBORNE TORPEDO: Lockheed Martin announced May 29 that it successfully demonstrated its High-Altitude Anti-Submarine Warfare Weapons Concept (HAAWC), which would deliver an Mk-54 lightweight torpedo from a P-3 aircraft from as high as 20,000 feet altitude. The fully functional MK-54 torpedo, with testing weight replacing the warhead, was recently launched from the P-3's internal weapons bay flying above 8,000 feet, the company said.
SECOND LOOKS: As NASA wraps up six months of system requirements reviews for its next human spacecraft, the Orion/Ares I combination, agency managers are starting to ponder how the vehicles could be used for science missions that wouldn't necessarily go to the moon, or even be manned. Science chief Alan Stern says his office is considering a workshop or other mechanism to get the word out to scientists on the capabilities of the new space "infrastructure" to visit asteroids or other near-Earth objects, and to find out what scientists really want to do.
EADS Astrium says testing for the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), intended to resupply the International Space Station, will be completed in time to ensure an end-of-year launch.
